“LOVE CAME TOO LATE.”
Mr. Bartley Bradstone, as he left the garden after his remarkably
unpleasant interview with Harold Faradeane, decided to strike while
the iron was hot. He had got the net round Olivia; he resolved to draw
it tight. From that evening he kept a close guard on himself, and his
manner changed--for the better. In fact, to the casual observer he
would have passed as a remarkably good-tempered man. He was polite to
the servants, deferential to the squire, attentive to Miss Amelia, and
to Olivia was devoted and reverential.
Not only the Grange people but outsiders noticed the change.
“Bradstone has improved since his engagement,” said Lord Carfield. “But
daily intercourse with Olivia Vanley would tame a savage and educate a
bear!”
He watched Olivia as a cat does a mouse, and she was quite afraid of
expressing a desire for anything, lest he should rush off and procure
it for her.
To Harold Faradeane, too, his manner was quite friendly; and he had
plenty of opportunity for showing it, for Faradeane came often to the
Grange now.
Sometimes he would walk in after breakfast, sometimes before they had
finished. In the latter case, he would sit and talk with the squire
until the meal was over; then go round the stables with him, or ride
over to some farm on the estate. And Olivia noticed that whenever
Harold Faradeane came her father’s face brightened, and lost something
of its anxious look. In fact, the old man had conceived a great liking
for the handsome, grave-voiced owner of The Dell, a liking that grew
day by day into a warm friendship.
To Olivia, Faradeane’s bearing was one of quiet, respectful courtesy.
At first the color had risen to her face, and her heart had leaped at
his approval; but though his appearance always sent a thrill through
her, she learned to master her emotion, and greeted him as calmly as he
greeted her.
Sometimes he would be persuaded to walk over and dine with them, and on
those occasions she put on one of her best frocks, and was more than
usually careful with the thick coils of hair which nestled like a crown
of silk on her shapely head. Often she stood before the glass when her
maid had left her, and looked at herself with a strange, absent air,
seeing not the reflection of her own face, but his, as she recalled it
on the day he had bent over her and taken her in his arms.
Then she would sigh heavily--and ah! so wistfully and wearily--and go
down to the drawing-room to see his tall, patrician figure and handsome
face beside the plebeian one of Bartley Bradstone, her future husband.
All through the dinner Bartley Bradstone would covertly watch the two,
even while he was apparently engaged with his plate or in talk with the
squire; but his sharp, suspicious eyes never detected the slightest
hint of any understanding between her and Faradeane. Always pleasant
and courteous, sometimes witty and amusing, Faradeane never singled
her out for any special attention of any kind; and Bartley Bradstone
guessed nothing of the scene in the woods, had no idea of the effect
upon Olivia which every word of Faradeane’s, every smile of his,
produced.
The days sped on without anything of consequence occurring, until
Bartley Bradstone struck.
One evening, just after the post had come in, Olivia went into the
study to get a fresh supply of notepaper, and found the squire pacing
up and down, with an ashen face and tightly-drawn lips. In his
trembling hand was an open letter, which, at her entrance, he crushed
up and thrust into his pocket.
“Papa!” she said in a low, anxious voice, and, going up to him
instantly, “what is the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing, dear!” he said, and his voice sounded harsh and
strained. “That is, I have had a troublesome letter.”
“Let me see it, dear,” she said, putting her arms round his neck.
“No, no!” he replied, hurriedly. “It--it is nothing you would
understand; only a business matter.”
“But let me see it, dear,” she pleaded. “I may be able to help you; at
any rate, I can share the trouble with you,” she added, sweetly.
But he shook his head.
“No, no; you could not help me. It--it is an old affair, that has
cropped up; it will be all right, but it has taken me by surprise.
Leave me now, dear. Bartley is waiting for you.”
“Shall I tell him to come to you? He understands business, at least,”
she added, with a touch of bitterness he did not notice.
“No,” he said, with a faint tinge of color coming into his white face.
“Why should we worry him? Go now, dear; I would show you this letter if
it could do any good, but it could not.”
She stole out, and the harassed man flung himself into a chair, and,
flattening out the note, read it again and again, with the persistence
of a man completely overwhelmed and bewildered.
It ran, in a hard, angular hand:
SIR--I beg to give you notice that I hold your notes of hand
for various sums amounting in the whole to the total of five
thousand eight hundred pounds, and that, being in want of
money, I shall be obliged if you will take up the notes at my
office on or before the twenty-sixth instant. I also beg to
inform you that the mortgages on the Home Farm and Swivelscote
have come into my possession, and that I have lodged formal
notice of foreclosure with your solicitors. Trusting you will
not be inconvenienced, and regretting that the tightness of the
money market compels me to trouble you, I remain, your obedient
servant,
EZEKIEL MOWLE.
The squire sat and pondered--if his confusion of mind could be
termed pondering--over the letter. He had never heard this name of
Mowle before, but at once understood that it must be that of some
money-lender; some man who had, for reasons best known to himself,
bought these debts, and, as he had a perfect right to do, required them
paid.
He knew that the Home Farm and Swivelscote were both mortgaged above
their value, and that any attempt to re-borrow the money would be
futile. They would have to be sold. The Home Farm, that had been part
and parcel of the Grange estate for centuries, and Swivelscote, which
had been granted to the Vanleys by King Charles II.--they would have to
be sold, and with them would go the pride and repute of the good, old
name!
“Thank God, I have no son to reproach me!” murmured the squire, with
quivering lips. “Thank God, my child will marry a rich man!” and he hid
his face in his hands as he bowed over the letter of Ezekiel Mowle.
Olivia went into the drawing-room, and found Harold Faradeane alone.
He was standing by the window, his clear-cut face and stalwart figure
silhouetted against the red light of the setting sun, and he turned as
her footsteps fell upon his ear; light as her tread was, he knew it.
They had never been alone together since the night he had brought her
home from Bessie’s, and at another time Olivia’s heart would have
beaten wildly, and her color would have come at finding herself alone
with him; but to-night she was too anxious about the squire to remark
it.
His quick eye, which always seemed to dwell upon her face with a
grave, guardian kind of watchfulness, noticed that something was amiss
instantly.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked, in a low, earnest voice which never
failed to find an echo in her heart. “Forgive me, but I thought you
looked--worried.”
For a moment she hesitated, and a strong impulse to tell him seized
her; but she put it from her, alas!
“Did I?” she said, forcing a smile. “Perhaps I am anxious about the
dinner. We have a new cook, you know.”
His eyes rested upon hers--smiling so bravely!--for a moment, then he
smiled.
“I cannot fancy you anxious about the dinner,” he said. “Is that
all?” and his hand held hers, or, rather, let hers go, slowly and
reluctantly. “If there is any other trouble I shall ask you to remember
our compact, and tell me.”
She was moving away, but turned her face toward him with a doubting,
wistful expression in her lovely eyes. Even then she might have spoken
and all her future changed, but her evil genius sent Bartley Bradstone
into the room at that moment, and with a bitter smile she turned,
thinking:
“If I tell any one it should be--my future husband.”
He came across the room, looking in more than his usual spirits, with
a light in his eyes which seemed like that of coming triumph, of
confident victory, and began talking in a light and laughing tone.
“How well you look to-night, dearest!” he murmured as he passed
Olivia, and she smiled again as she thought how blind he was, and how
keen-sighted was the other man. “Ah, Faradeane!” and he shook his hand
vigorously. “Jolly evening; we shall have plenty of birds if this goes
on. Of course you’ll consider yourself free of all my shooting. Glad to
see you at any time, don’t you know.”
“Thank you,” said Faradeane, in the quiet manner in which he always
addressed him; “that’s very kind of you.”
“Oh, I like treating a neighbor as a neighbor; that’s my form--always
was. Where’s the squire, Olivia? Miss Amelia, you’ll lose your
character for punctuality,” and he pulled out his watch, and nodded and
laughed at that lady, who, in an elaborate dinner-dress, which would
have been juvenile for a girl of twenty-one, was casting side-glances
of approval at her figure in the pier-glass.
“I’m sure you gentlemen would destroy any one’s good habits,” she
simpered, slapping him with her fan. “Often and often I hurry and
scurry my maid so that she sends me down a perfect fright lest I should
be late, then you come in a quarter of an hour after the bell has rung.
Oh, you men, you men!” and she reached out and made a dab at Faradeane,
who smiled gravely down upon her as a huge mastiff looks down in kindly
pity on a spaniel.
At that moment the squire entered, and Faradeane saw at once how pale
and harassed he looked. Bartley Bradstone, however, appeared to take no
notice, and he greeted him in the same half-boisterous way he had done
the others.
All through the dinner the squire seemed depressed, though he made a
valiant attempt to be cheerful, and all through the dinner Bartley
Bradstone’s spirits seemed to rise. He took more wine than usual, too,
and seemed disposed to linger over the Château Lafitte after Olivia and
Aunt Amelia had gone.
Faradeane, who rarely drank more than one glass with his dessert, arose.
“I’ll smoke my cigarette on the terrace,” he said, and the squire
nodded with the gentle smile which the father might bestow on a
favorite son.
Bartley Bradstone looked after the tall, thin figure with an evil,
envious glance.
“Faradeane isn’t much in the way of company, is he?” he said,
disparagingly.
The squire looked surprised.
“I think he is the most entertaining of men,” he said.
“Oh, ah, with ladies, perhaps,” assented Bartley Bradstone, grudgingly,
“but he can’t sit and take his glass of wine like other fellows,” and
he filled his glass again.
“He doesn’t drink much,” said the squire, absently, and he sighed.
“You seem a cup too low to-night, squire,” said Bartley Bradstone, with
affected carelessness. “Anything wrong?”
The squire hesitated a moment, then took the letter from his pocket.
“I did not mean to trouble you with it, though Olivia asked me to do
so,” he said. “But perhaps it is my duty to tell you,” and he leaned
his head on his hand.
Bradstone read the note slowly, then emitted a low whistle.
“Mowle, Mowle. I seem to have heard the name before,” he said, as if
trying to recall it. “I’ve an idea he is a kind of money-lender. Do you
know him?”
The squire shook his head, the fingers of his thin, right hand beating
a mournful tune on the tablecloth.
“No. I’ve no doubt you are right. It doesn’t signify who or what he is;
his claim is a lawful one, and I must meet it. I thought you ought to
know.”
“Yes, if it’s the man I think it is, you will have to meet it,” said
Bradstone. “These fellows will have their bond; and you can’t blame
them. Business is business.”
“I do not blame him,” said the poor squire, simply. “What troubles me
is the fact that I do not know how to arrange for his claim.”
Bartley Bradstone looked at the letter again.
“What is the amount?” he said.
The squire, after a few minutes’ reflection, told him, and he whistled
again. It was not a loud whistle, but it jarred upon the squire’s
nerves.
“Look here,” said Bradstone, after an artistic pause. “If you will
leave this to me I will try and arrange it for you----”
The squire looked up, and his face flushed.
“I--I could not permit you to pay it,” he said, gravely.
“No, no; but I can arrange it. I can get time, and time is everything
in these matters. Things are going to improve presently, and the
property will be worth a great deal more money than this. Leave it to
me, will you?”
“You are very kind,” said the squire in a low voice.
“Not at all. I’m doing it for Olivia, don’t you know! But I say, I must
ask you to keep it quiet.”
The squire looked up inquiringly.
“I mean, don’t mention it to any one--not to Faradeane, for instance.”
“It is not the kind of thing one talks about,” said the squire, slowly.
“I should certainly not mention it to Faradeane or any one else.”
Bradstone nodded with an air of satisfaction.
“All right; I’ll do the best I can, depend on it; and don’t you worry
about it. Mr. Rowle, Mowle, or whatever his name is, will find he has a
business man to deal with, and alter his tune, no doubt.”
The squire sighed.
“If one could only wipe out one’s past!” he said.
“Oh, there’s no use in crying over spilt milk,” responded Bartley
Bradstone. “Shall we go in to the ladies now?”
“You go,” said the squire. “I will take a turn on the terrace with
Faradeane.”
Bartley Bradstone’s face darkened.
“Oh, very well,” he said, with a curt nod, and left the room.
Olivia looked up from the book she was supposed to be reading as he
entered the drawing-room.
“Where are papa and Mr. Faradeane?” she said.
“On the terrace,” he replied, speaking in a low tone, so as not to
awaken Miss Amelia, who was sleeping the sleep of the just in an
armchair. “He is rather out of sorts to-night.”
She looked at him apprehensively.
“He is in trouble. Has he told you?” she asked, below her breath.
He drew a chair near hers, and sat down, bending close over her, his
eyes resting on her lovely face with a hungry and cunning regard.
“Well, yes, he has. Do you know what it is?”
She shook her head.
“No. Will you tell me?”
“A man has come down upon him for a large sum of money,” he said. “A
man named Mowle.”
She drew a sharp breath, and her face grew pale. Then she looked at him
quickly.
“But--but I thought----”
His face did not change, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“I know. You mean that I told you I had got all the debts. Well, I
thought I had, but I must have missed these somehow. At any rate, this
fellow has got them, and he wants them paid, and the squire can’t see
his way----”
“Oh, poor papa, poor papa!” she breathed.
He ventured to take her hand.
“Don’t be cut up about it,” he said in a low voice. “I have promised to
see the man and arrange with him.”
She raised her eyes to his, and her face grew crimson.
“That--that is good of you,” she said.
“No, no. Of course I’d do anything. It will keep the man off for a
time; but----”
He stopped.
“But?” she said, anxiously.
“The money must be paid before long, you know,” he went on,
“and--and----See here, Olivia, it rests with you.”
“With me?” faintly.
He nodded, keeping his eyes upon the carpet.
“Yes. You--you know our agreement. The day we are married it shall be
in your power to take all this trouble off your father’s shoulders.
I’ve said what I’ll do, and I’ll do it. The morning of the marriage I
shall pay into the Wainford Bank the sum of fifty thousand pounds in
your name. You can do what you like with it. Pitch it in the gutter,
buy diamonds, or clear the squire----”
Her head drooped lower and lower, then she raised it slowly, and waited
for him to continue, for she felt that more was coming.
“Why should we wait?” he continued, insidiously. “I hate long
engagements; and the sooner we are married the sooner will the squire
be rid of this trouble of his. Will you marry me in a fortnight,
Olivia?”
She started, and every drop of blood seemed to leave her face.
She could hear her father’s and Faradeane’s footsteps outside, could
catch a word or two spoken by the latter, and his musical, true voice
seemed to strike in with that of the man at her side and caused it to
sound falser.
“In a fortnight?” she breathed, and her voice sounded strained and
harsh.
“Why not?” he insisted. “You can get everything ready by that time. But
you are not the one to think of clothes and all that sort of thing when
your father’s happiness is at stake.”
“No,” she said in a hard, mechanical voice. “But----” and her hands
locked together. “Give me another week!”
“Very well,” he said, and his eyes shone with satisfaction, for he had
expected her to plead for a month at least. “Say three weeks, then.
Three weeks!” his face flushed and he smiled, “that will give me time
to do up The Maples and make it fit for its mistress, its queen. Ah,
how happy we will be, dearest! Where shall we go? Italy, Switzerland,
the lakes?” and he clasped her hand, which seemed to grow colder each
moment. “There is nothing in the world you may want that you shan’t
have, I promise you--nothing! I’m rich, as you know, and I’m prepared
to spend any amount you like; you shall see.”
She looked at him. It seemed to her marvelous that he should so little
understand her.
“I want nothing--nothing but to see papa happy!” she said.
“Very well,” he assented, “and you will do so, and have the
satisfaction of feeling that it’s all your doing! It isn’t every girl
who could pull her father out of the mud as you will do.”
She winced; every word he uttered jarred upon her as it did upon the
squire.
“I--I think I will go upstairs,” she said. “I have a headache to-night.”
“Oh,” he said in a tone of disappointment; then he added, with a
cunning glance, “Don’t forget you promised to sing that duet with
Faradeane.”
Her lips quivered, and she turned her head aside.
“I had forgotten,” she said, simply.
He got up to hide the evil look which crossed his face.
“Yes, you’ll stop to please him, my lady,” he muttered. “But wait a
while, wait a while!”
Faradeane and the squire came in, and the former went up to her.
“Will you sing?” he said, “or are you too tired?” he added, quick to
notice her pallor and weariness.
“No,” she said, and went to the piano, and he found one of the modern
ballads set duet fashion, and they began.
Their voices harmonized perfectly, and the squire settled himself in a
chair to listen with something like peace in his eyes.
“If you had loved me years ago,
When Time was young and Fate was free
What happiness we now should know!
Love came too late for you and me.”
the refrain of the song ran; but at the last line of the second verse
Olivia’s clear voice faltered and broke, and the music ceased.
The squire rose apprehensively, and Bartley Bradstone glowered across
the room suspiciously, but, with a quick, yet apparently natural motion
of his hand, Faradeane caused the music to slide from the stand.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “It was my clumsiness.”
She looked up at him gratefully, the moment or two giving her time to
recover herself.
“Let me try it again,” she said in a low voice; but he shook his head.
“No; you are tired, I can see, and I am out of voice.”
“I am tired,” she said, with a smile that cut him to the heart. “And I
think I’ll say good-night.”
He went and opened the door for her, and, after bidding the rest
“Good-night,” she passed him with bent head, and without giving him her
hand.
When she had gained her own room she flung herself down beside the bed,
and hid her face in her hands.
“Three weeks! Three weeks!” she moaned. Then she rose with a desperate
laugh, and sang softly, with the delight in self-torture which a woman
alone can feel:
“If you had loved me years ago,
When Time was young and Fate was free,
What happiness we now should know!
Love came too late for you and me.”